The 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll

Americans want to eat without consequences. And they want to eat “American.” But should we really replace a beloved national icon?

Click here](/magazine/2010/08/60-minutes-poll-201008.html?currentPage=2) to view the complete results, or to answer the questions yourself, visit the 60 Minutes homepage at CBSNews.com.

There's no question that all things Stars and Stripes—related were on our collective mind—or, anyway, all edible things Star and Stripes—related. With myriad cuisines available from food court to shining food court, we still overwhelmingly chose “American” (whatever that term means in the nation that invented “Thai fajitas”) as our favored option when dining out. What particular item on that patriotic menu? The survey didn't ask in so many words, but here's a clue: queried about how we might update the expression “as American as …,” more 45-and-overs selected “triple bacon cheeseburgers” as their preferred substitute for “apple pie.” (Only “Apple iPod” and “NASCAR” polled better overall, and just barely.)

Along the same lines, if Americans could indulge themselves in just one thing without worrying about health consequences, not even smoking, drinking, tanning, and unprotected sex combined—in other words, not even being in a real-life James Bond movie!—could equal our first choice: eating whatever we wanted. Like …triple bacon cheeseburgers? It probably isn't coquilles Saint Jacques or tofu we have in mind.

If we could own a work of art, the under-45 whippersnappers might take a Picasso or a van Gogh, but the rest of us overwhelmingly see a Norman Rockwell in that frame over the mantel. What could be more all-American than that?

Finally, a whopping 63 percent—very nearly two-thirds of us—went out on a limb and stated for the record that we believe our president was born in the United States. It's enough to make you proud to be an American—or 63 percent proud, at any rate.